Florida air traffic controllers briefly lose radar: Here's what FAA said

Air traffic controllers in Jacksonville, Florida, briefly lost access to radar on Friday, June 20 after a fiber optic line was cut. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the outage did not result in any flight delays or cancellations, as a backup system activated immediately. The FAA said the Jacksonville radar center remained operational, though it switched to an alert status once its primary communication line went down.

“There was no loss of critical air traffic service,” an FAA spokesperson said. However, officials did not confirm the cause or exact location of the fiber cut.

The Jacksonville center oversees aircraft flying through around 160,000 square miles of airspace, covering parts of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

This incident stood in contrast to similar radar outages earlier this year at a facility in Philadelphia. In that case, the backup system took 90 seconds to activate, and the resulting confusion led to major flight disruptions at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. Five air traffic controllers went on trauma leave following the Philadelphia outage, and hundreds of flights were canceled.

The FAA said those earlier issues highlighted the need to modernise parts of the US air traffic control system, which still depends on older copper wiring. Transportation officials are pushing Congress to approve funding for system upgrades.